Stereophonic Philosophy: Part One

On a cloudy day in June, a Rationalist and an Empiricist were strolling through a meadow, arguing about the meaning of the universe…

E: To say “the universe” is a linguistic trick. It’s a label we’ve invented for an absence we can sense. We can sense the unity of everything, but in reality it’s only a trick. We can only infer that if you add up every thing there is, you would achieve a sum, and this sum would be a sum, therefore, monism is true, but only according to a particular, describable perspective consisting of a certain truth-criterion; that perspective is yours, yet you do not see it as such, while that truth-criterion is merely absolute objective correspondence. Your thirst for necessity has led you down that oh-so-beaten path, followed by true Christians, only to conclude that language is not a tool, but evidence of our divine origins. According to you, what we know is all we know and all we can know. I'm afraid that the Earth was revolving around the Sun long before Copernicus.

R: Surely. But what else could it be but a linguistic trick? You’re betraying your belief, sir; you believe that there is something beyond your apprehension of it, beyond what you understand it to be. If there is, and certainly an untrained mind will tend to think this, then we are not so special and the universe is actually unintelligible. If intelligibility is real, if we can know and not simply believe, there must be truth that we can say is true without reservation.

E: What does it mean to say a truth is true without reservation?

R: It means that 2 + 2 = 4 on the moon and in a black hole. It means there is a domain wherein we exist and of which we can know things, not simply believe things. Furthermore, there can only be one domain, because as soon as we become aware of something, it becomes a part of it. To posit an outside is to bring the outside within the Absolute, to make it inside. Logically speaking, there simply cannot be an outside to our knowledge. There is non-being, certainly, but in terms of there being an ultimate reality we cannot access, this is nonsense. Positivity is prior and ultimate; all things are what they are and what they are not, this is true. But in order to not be, it must first be. To repeat, the suggestion that there is something beyond our ability to understand it is utter nonsense. Just because we did not know then that the Earth was going around the Sun does not mean they didn’t exist or were utterly unable to be understood as such. To be is to perceive, to be is to be perceived.

E: Bravo. Your recourse to ontology was exquisitely well-timed and executed. To make a claim about “being” is to assume a direction. It’s like a basic conditional statement; if this, then that. Assuming this ontology, then blah blah blah. For all we know, ontology is an utter fiction rooted only in our desire to eat, procreate, and shelter ourselves. All else is frivolous. This certainly seems to be the case in today’s world.

R: But who are we when we are able to assert something like that? To say that my ontology is an utter fiction is to be a language-using human in the thick of the question of being.

E: How am I in the thick of the question of being? As far as I can tell, I’m in the thick of talking to you, friend. This reality to me is primary. Who are you to be pontificating about being, anyway?

Their conversation veered into economics…

E: Economics is the language of organized human sustenance. How am I going to feed myself and my family? The assumed answer to this question is the condition of everything else within the realm of human experience…

R: (cutting in) But what if that isn’t necessarily the case? What if the idea of economics is a fiction; it’s a costume we wear, designed by the Masters who make the Rules. Who does it benefit to break down human life into a matter of eating and having a roof? The insecure neurotics and the Masters (who are often one and the same). I don’t need McDonald’s to remind me I’m hungry and I don’t need my landlord to remind I want to stay warm and dry.. The power-hungry people who are unsure of themselves as primarily plural beings are the ones who benefit by manifesting their ego-will through choices and actions driven by domination and directed towards expansion. Economics knows no modesty, but modesty is as fundamental as eating.

E: I don’t think so. I think eating is, shall we say, the most fundamental aspect of being. It’s the closest we come on a regular basis to being in tune with the ebb and flow of energy that is the cosmos.

R: Now you sound like me.

E: You’re a persuasive fellow. Would you agree that it is people who exploit people, not systems, just as it is people who kill people, not guns?

R: Yes and no. I do agree, but only with you, whom I know to not own a gun and not have a desire to. I do not agree with that assertion if the person making it is simply contesting gun control. It’s a shallow argument not meant for politics. To make it is to foolishly disregard the meaning of the gun, i.e. the reality that its primary purpose is to hurt and kill. It’s a totem of power. Every gun in every cop’s belt is an assurance that might makes right.

E: But doesn’t that ignore the difference between a society that agrees on common goals and rules by which to live its life and a criminal with a gun? The former’s sole purpose is to prevent the latter. You have executive might and corporate might. One originates in whimsy, the other in an agreed-upon system. If you concede that though a dictator obeys only his whimsy, a system of operations emerges according to his tendencies, then you cannot avoid the reality that societies require systems to function. However, humans are more than parts of a system; they are the authors of the system and further, are infinitely more complex than the system itself. If there is to be a system, let it be based on rules concerning common goals that pertain to a given group of people while fostering the greatest amount of freedom of expression and self-actualization.

Just then, E tripped on a molehill and fell on his face. R crouched down with concern in his eyes.

R: Was that supposed to happen?

E looked at the sky, then R.

E: I have no idea.